South Central British Columbia (SCBC)

[JSS]

David, thanks for your feedback.
If you would like some detailed information about the map and its events just PM me with an email address and I will forward to you the 30+ page map guide. However, since it has been nearly five years since I wrote the guide, I do not recall if it is about the very same build you are playing or a few builds later. In any case the differences should be minimal.
Here are some tips in the mean time.
Once you have taken over all the A.I. companies you should have 18 Tycoon points. For the early connection to Midway, Penticton and Hope you will receive one Tycoon point each (21 total).
For ten successful years of Cascade Lumber Mill deliveries you will receive one point.
For the right answer you gave to your construction Foreman you may have received one Tycoon point and another Tycoon point might have been awarded for the "right" answer when you where asked if you wanted to keep the construction crews or not.
By now you might have 24 Tycoon points and yet have not made any Tycoon points with deliveries to any smelter.

If you have a "good" delivery status to one of your smelters you receive one Tycoon point and if you have an "outstanding" delivery rate you will get two Tycoon points. What constitutes a good or outstanding delivery is a bit more complicated.
Each 50 loads of coal, 100 loads of iron, 50 loads of goods, 20 loads of meat and 10 loads of alcohol delivered to a smelter you own increments an intermediate counter by one count. Each 100 loads of steel picked up will also increase this count by one. (So you will have six points with the above deliveries and pick up made) If you deliver at least one load of each of the required deliveries you will receive 3 more points to this count.
If the intermediate count reaches 8 or more you will receive one Tycoon point and the intermediate count will be increased by one. If the immediate count reaches 10 or more you will receive two Tycoon points.

Additional Tycoon points can be had by connecting to Vernon, Osoyoos and Spences Bridge.

You can also lose Tycoon points by not fulfilling your commitments, staying connected to some railroads even so your have been requested to remove the connection and by giving a wrong answer to your bank when dealing with your overdraft.
As you can see there are plenty of Tycoon points available but they are not helpful in/for a "quick" game.

Should I ever have plenty of time available again I would like to finish this map. I think there is room to add a few more events later in the game just to make it more interesting. The history messages also still need to be completed and I am sure there are more than a few bugs.

[belbincolne]

Well unless SCBC is short for something I havent got it so would be interested to see it!

[Moabdave]

Well unless SCBC is short for something I haven't got it so would be interested to see it!

SCBC=South Central British Columbia. It's available in the Hawk's North American map archive near the end. There are no "major" cities in this scenario, Vancouver is just off the western edge of the map. It has more to do with blazing trails through the Canadian Rockies. David

[belbincolne]

Ah yes - have got it but cant remember playing it. Will have to give it a try! Thanks

[belbincolne]

O/K now I remember it - absolutely drove me daft and still does. Cant understand anything about it. I took over Red and connected to suggested town and first required one. Had trains between any towns with resources but nothing ran and particularly not those ex-Red in US. Even the trains that were running for Red didn't. I now see from previous post this is deliberate.

The scenario is still Beta and (I'd suggest) obviously needs an awful lot of work on it. Reason I didn't find it before was that I'd deleted the un-zipped file - which I do for any that (a) are boring (b) don't work and (c) as in this case - are un-understandable.

Sorry - I dont like being negative about something that has obviously had a lot of work spent on it but lifes too short

[RayofSunshine]

Bel,
I believe that I have mentioned this in a different thread. It pertains to those scenarios of which have crashed, problem to understand, problems with the scenario, etc, that I have a "special folder" marked "BAD MAPS". I dislike to discard any scenario, as when I catch up with the scenarios completed, and spare time, I pull ones out from the Bad Maps, and try to see if I can improve my playing. Also, I check the threads to see if there has been any up-dates to problems.
During the past month I had found that a few of the Bad Maps were bascially due to missing engines. After I had checked both my inventory and the files and folders of created engines, I was able to play those scenarios, and was then able to store them in my "user creation" folder.
I still have a few, including SCBC, This is Home, This is Sweden, etc in that Bad Maps, as I also have some misgivings as to them being complete. I like to give each user creator a chance with their talents and imagination
Just a suggestion. (hats off)

[belbincolne]

Hi Ray

Only delete the unzipped file which of course take up a lot of space compared to the zip file so I've every(???) scenario there has ever been in English for RT3 plus a few foreign ones. Same for Tropico which is the other game I still play. I'm an obsessive collector I'm afraid Not just this - books and records too.

[RayofSunshine]

For anyone with a "space" problem, I have a number of discs "burned" with the "zipped" files. When a person figures the space required for 100s of scenarios, putting them on a disc, not only will free up computer space, but also saves them against virus or damage. Especially on system crashes. Which reminds me, that it is about time that I weed out the dupes, and then burn the "newer" scenarios.

[JSS]

Some railroad clips from my last trip to Europe.

Clips

Hawk please move them to a more appropriate spot if need be.

[RayofSunshine]

Well JSs,
I don't need a 30 page manual, LOL , but after a number of attempts when the initial (beta) was posted, I put it on the "back burner", as I couldn't get to the Dog Creek Valley via a tunnel. Or any other way either. At first I believed that there were Logging Camps placed, to help in the enroute of laying track. But, it did not matter if I laid track above the Camp, or even ran a tunnel below the Camp, I was unable to accomplish the tunnel to the Dog Creek Valley. At this writing, although the "available" track showed 57-69, that may not have been an adequate sum to complete the tunnel. Will have to attempt the venture, with more track available.
I remember the fun I had trying to get a track laid over the "pass" in the Kootenay scenario. Guess this is just another of your imagination of "trial and error".

[belbincolne]

Well went through this very carefully then tried to lay track as instructed. Proved impossible. On an earlier try I had got to Midway somehow but couldn't do this time. The map is just so big and complex (as are the instructions) that I'm afraid it drives me mad and I dont really feel like playing it any more

[JSS]

Ray of Sunshine, I understand that you might think that you do not need a manual yourself. That is cool with me.

It was my intention however to provide people testing the map and providing constructive feedback (not just "the map does not work and is crap") with the partially finished manual so they can use the information accumulated to date to help and make sense of what was happening and perhaps why.
The final game would have been furnished with a complete manual since understanding what was happening during that specific era is a key to understanding the reasoning of some of the map objectives. To play the game knowing where you fit in and being part of the story leads to a more satisfying game experience IMHO.

To your more specific issue as to not being able to reach Dog Creek Valley:
Right now I can only think of two possibilities. Firstly you try to build track outside the assigned corridor (territory) and the other reason might be that you are starting the track for the tunnel too far away from the "portal" (it is only a two or so cell area) and hence run out of track. The "portal" on the east side should be easy to make out if you turn off the ground cover. It is just about right under Dog Mountain and has nothing to do with the logging camps directly. The logging camps are only there to provide additional income if you can afford to purchase a locomotive for that purpose. To me it was a waste of resources.
Not certain anymore since I have not played the game for years but if you don't mind cheating you can bulldoze additional track layed in the month(s) earlier. This will add to the track count of the current month. I think that used to work.

belbincolne, I "feel" you frustration. This map is extremely complex. When the events were written it was the first scenario, to the best of my knowledge, that used true track counting when laying track. Not only was it based on the real to life track laying schedule but it was also adjusted for seasonal variations and modified by several other conditions like snow, rain and choice events.
The way the events are written are very much a puzzle unless you know that the ones starting with C are construction events, starting with I deal with information, M deal with the medals T with the tycoon points etc etc etc.
The way the variables are used was at the time also a "first". The same game variables are used to indicate many different statuses in different events. Some of them are used over ten times and in several different event groups. You will need to know for instance that CV4 =11 means that construction to Midway is in progress or that CV4 = 12 means that construction to Pentiction is in progress. Without the written manual explaining all those different functions it is much more difficult to make sense out of it all.

In any case, sorry to have wasted your time.


BTW, did any of you get to look at any of the movie clips? How well did that work? Did you look at and listen to the Swiss train arriving at the station? The arrival was hardly audible.

[Hawk]

BTW, did any of you get to look at any of the movie clips? How well did that work? Did you look at and listen to the Swiss train arriving at the station? The arrival was hardly audible.

I downloaded the Swiss one on the incline. That's a pretty big file size for such a short video.
I tried to download a couple others but one was over a gig and would take about 8 hours to download. Needless to say I stopped that one.

Maybe you should convert them to a compressed format, such as wmv or something.

BTW! I used VLC PLayer to view the one I downloaded.

[JSS]

Hawk, those videos are all HD (1080p) and this is one reason why they are so large. I had some "compressed" to mpeg4 but the grew larger in size. Go figure.
The media player in Windows 7 plays them very well. VLC does a good job even if you are still running XP but with other players there is way to much choppiness.
Right now a process is running to convert some of my other movies so they can be streamed directly without downloading but this process is very slow and the picture quality is not that great. I will let it loose on those files when it is done with the others.
I do not expect to ever reach a stellar download speed since those files are located on a drive beside me. Using a Seagate GoFlex Net unit where I do not have to upload any files to any remote server and have total access/distribution control. It's a great way to share files with others.

[Hawk]

I refuse to use Windows Media Player. Far too much crap involved with it. 'Course I always try to find alternative programs to use other than Windows garbage and Adobe crap.

I use either VLC or Irfanview, but I don't think Irfanview will play that format, although I haven't tried.

And yes, I am still using XP.

Strange that MP4 was a larger file.

The download speed on that server is really slow too. That's part of the problem. I'm averaging about 110 KBs and I'm on cable modem capable of 1.5 MBs (12 Mbs).

[JSS]

Hawk, this is very interesting. Using the link from this thread and downloading the file 20100930121151.mts from the Switzerland folder (a 2.8Gb file) it takes about 4min. to download the file at a 11.+ Mb/sec. and using Firefox to download it. I believe I am using the Internet connection like anybody else.

[Hawk]

You're probably closer to the server than I am. That can sometimes have a great affect on download speeds.

For whatever it's worth, I found an m2ts converter that will convert to various formats. I just tried it and converted one of the movies to avi and the size difference was remarkable.

The original file size of this particular file is 122 MB. After conversion to avi format it's 27.3 MB.

There's a catch - figures
The free version only converts 60% of the video. It costs $39.95 to register to convert the full video.

If you're interested, here's the link: http://www.m2ts-converter.net/

[JSS]

Hawk, one should be able to stream those clips now. No need to download anymore. Just click on the clips inside the folders. The quality is not quite as good but still acceptable me thinks. Let me know how it plays for you please.

[Hawk]

Anybody that has Flash Player installed probably could stream them. I don't, and will never have Flash installed on my system, or anything from Adobe.
Sorry I can't test for you.

[RayofSunshine]

Well JSS,
I guess I stand corrected in my statement, "that I don't need a 30 page manuel". Actually I probably do need it, but don't know if I want to try and read thru that amount of instructions. However, I may just have to apologize for the comment, to get the download, as it could give me answers to problems I am having. LOL

In testing, I save my "playing" in increments, so if I don't find a solution to a problem, I can go back to the last "saved", download it, and give it another attempt. Hence the laying to track in the wrong direction is not a problem. If revenue and a track allotment is adequate, I will bulldoze. Otherwise, I just revert back to a previous saved increment.

At this point, thanks for the suggestion of disabling the "ground cover", and see if I can find a solution to find the "entrance to the Doggy tunnel".